


To be in love, is to be devoured

by Baryshnikov



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Confident Harry Potter, Love, M/M, Mild Power Play, Mild Sexual Tension, Slytherin Harry Potter, what is love?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:14:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24660640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baryshnikov/pseuds/Baryshnikov
Summary: Tom has to face the mortifying ordeal of accepting he's in love.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle
Comments: 11
Kudos: 275





	To be in love, is to be devoured

Love was ravenous.

It devoured, ruthlessly, desperately, and without shame.

Sitting on the sofa in the middle of the common room, staring at the fire and swinging his leg back and forth so that the heel hit loudly against the leg, the only way that Tom could describe love was as a hot, wet, monster, dripping with mutilative intentions like leaves in the rainforest--slowly filling up the human body with a sickly sweet sickness. It was a terminal disease. A death sentence for productivity, as every single thought that curled through his brain was now coloured with the same sticky pink. 

For love was a pink stained monster that knew only hunger and destruction; it ate away at the body like acid--corroding flesh and crushing bone simply because it could. Such wanton violence would have been hypnotic to witness had it not been so painful to experience.

Like a shipwrecked sailor tossed around between the ocean's palms, half-starved and choking on the sea water, Tom could feel his lungs sting with each breath, and every muscle ache from constant use, but the greatest victim of love's affections was his heart.

It squeezed and clenched and burned. Ripping him apart from the inside out; tearing chunks of flesh and entire organs out like a scavenger, until there was nothing but a howling cavity inside his chest. A space coloured red with blood and white with bone, a place where sticky pink love could grow and swell and fester.

Tom swallowed and continued to stare at the fire. It crackled as it ate the wood and licked at the iron grate; burning with its teeth and heating the room with its tongue. But for all the merits of fire, it would never have the same brutal power as love.

Fire merely killed, love devoured.

Still watching how the flames slipped, almost sensually between the logs, Tom began to tap his finger against the leather arm of the sofa, along the same rhythm as his heel banged. A heart beat. That was how he had to measure everything now, the steady rhythm of his heart was as reliable as any clock, but less finite.

The accompaniment quietened the low talking behind him, though it didn't prevent it. He would have thought that his 'friends' would have learnt not to gossip by now. That they would have learnt not to talk about him behind his back, especially not when being caught was such a certainty. But, apparently, stupidity was still rife among them.

He could hear whispered words and overlapping phrases about his distraction and its cause. The same name being repeated on twisted tongues and handed out like samples from a sweet shop.

Tom stopped tapping and the voices fell silent, but he could feel their lingering stares; cold eyes settled on the back of his neck, watching, considering, weighing up the risk and deciding whether it was worth taking a fatal bite out of him.

Simply contemplating if love had made him weak.

"If you have something to say," he said slowly and without turning to face them, "I suggest you say it." Despite his insides turning themselves over with every syllable, Tom kept his tone steady, after all, he was _not_ going to be defeated by something as trivial as love, even if it was for someone as extraordinary as Harry Potter.

There was the sound of shuffling feet and slight whispers, but no one voiced an opinion. Good; it was easier like that.

Tom went back to watching the fire and ignoring that tight, squeezing, sensation under his skin. The one that only happened when the object of his perverse affection was nearby. As if on cue, the door opened and someone entered; their footfalls confident--too confident--and their hand sliding along the lip of Tom's sofa without a care in the world.

Harry Potter.

His friends all were properly silent now, content to just watch as love continued to eat away at Tom's brain like the parasite it was. Just chewing and chewing and chewing under his skin until he was so painfully hyper-aware of everything in this room. 

The dry heat working its way into his lungs, the crawling under his skin, the way his collar was scratching his neck and the echoing sound his shoes made against the floor. Tom hated it. He hated his visceral reaction to another human being who was no different to himself, but who managed to do things to his brain. 

Harry Potter triggered a love reaction, and to feel love was to be eaten up; it was to have yourself be swallowed alive in an act that was profoundly claustrophobic--your head swirling and your lungs aching. Tom gripped his hands into a fist and continued to stare at the fire, playing at disinterest as Harry's fingers ran right up to his neck and skitted over his skin. 

There must have been electricity in his fingers for their touch made Tom's insides curl, a flickering heat begin to burn at his very core. He clenched his hand harder, nails digging into his palms and leaving crescent moons in their wake. 

Harry just smiled as he rounded the corner of the sofa; a smile hanging heavy at the corner of his mouth. He sat at the opposite end of the sofa, one leg bent and the foot placed firmly on the seat, the other hanging down. There was something so enviously casual in his stance and it made Tom _ache_. 

But he tried to ignore it. Just as he always ignored the pounding inside him, as though there were a violent sea always crashing against his ribs, the breakwater smashing so hard it threatened to splinter him from the inside out. 

Harry was watching him. His chin pressed into his knee, and that same smile imprinted into his lips, there was a smugness in his gaze, as though he had just worked out some great conspiracy. Tom turned his head away and watched as the last of the wood was completely consumed by the flames. 

"I think you like me," Harry said, crudely interrupting the moment whilst continuing to watch him with the same intent interest that Tom was paying to the fireplace. His tone was still too smug and placed too close to teasing for Tom's liking, too casual, too trivial. It didn't seem to fit with the way Tom's insides were being torn apart and then reformed, only to be torn over and over again. 

"I think you _really_ like me," Harry continued as he shifted his hand, his fingers drawing a figure of eight along his outstretched thigh, creeping higher with each dip and swirl. Tom tried not to watch and tried not to think about the softness of Harry's fingertips burning a path over his neck, or the gentleness of his touch, or any of the things that made his heart shudder. 

"Believe me," Tom said, his gaze wandering over before he caught it, "it's not a permanent arrangement," he said, standing up, and preparing to leave, but Harry stood up as well. His physical presence blocking the easiest route to the door, and trapping him into the small space between the fireplace and the sofa. 

With a brief glance to either side, Tom sat back down again, this time though he was unable to keep his fingers still. They twitched against the arm in full view of anyone who looked, including Harry who was watching with entirely too much interest. 

Harry did not sit down, instead, he wandered in the guise of casualness over to Tom and stood above him. His outline tinged pink by the combination of the lights above and the flames behind. 

Tom swallowed and shifted himself. If it had been anyone else, he would have stood up again and gone toe to toe with them until they understood their place. But with Harry, he was stuck against the sofa--as if bound there by magic--and he could almost feel the leather binding itself around his wrist and ankles and neck, keeping him contained. Tom looked up at Harry's face. 

In this light, there were shadows that made sharp lines which cut through Harry's natural demeanour, and painted an almost wicked smile over his face. Tom could feel the energy of a plan about to be enacted, and he exhaled slowly, trying to calm his stuttering heart. 

When Harry didn't move, Tom swallowed again, harder, and took it upon himself to speak.   
"Is there something you want, Harry?" he said, though now, the words were sticking to the back of his throat like caramel toffees and every word felt weak with wanting. 

Harry's smile widened and he leaned down so that he was closer to Tom, his hand resting against the back of the sofa, a mere inch from Tom's neck,and his knee braced against the cushion.   
"Actually," he said, never taking his eyes of Tom's face, "I think there is, Tom."

Without warning, Harry climbed onto the sofa and spread himself over Tom's lap. He was warm and heavy, and his hand that had been against the sofa, creeped insidiously downward to clutch at Tom's shoulder. 

"I think I want you," Harry said bluntly, his eyes fixed onto Tom's mouth, watching intently as he licked his lips, "and I think you want me as well, don't you?" 

Tom stayed still. His hands scrunched into fists, but standing limply by his sides, mere millimeters from Harry's thighs. The sticky pink love inside him wanted to touch him, it wanted to feel him; to touch and claw and scratch at Harry's skin. The small, rational, part of Tom wanted that too, he wanted to let that howling hurricane of love out of himself--release the floodgates, as it were--and see what would happen. 

He didn't though. Instead, he swallowed, and dropped his eyes away from Harry's. "You're being presumptuous, Harry," he said coldly--even as his insides felt hotter than they ever had before--as he made to get up. 

But before he could move, Harry grabbed at his hand--his palm was warm and soft--and pressed it against his chest. Beneath his skin, Tom could feel the scratching of his heart, as though it were a bird caged by his ribs and scrabbling for its freedom. He swallowed, keeping his eyes firmly on the buttons of Harry's shirt, simply to avoid seeing his eyes. 

"I'm being accurate, Tom," he said, and just Harry saying his name was enough to make his heart pound harder and the feeling of nauseousness rise up into his throat. Behind him, Tom could hear the cogs of the rmour mill begin to whirr and his 'friends' start to chatter like excitable parakeets. 

"You know," Harry said, not moving his hand, "you don't have to be scared of me," he continued in a murmur against Tom's ear, his teeth scraping over the shell in such a way that Tom almost wished he'd just take a bite. Harry didn't. Instead, he just shifted himself, his hands hooking around the back of Tom's neck and stroking his thumb over the soft skin. 

"I'm not scared," Tom hissed, and it was true because who would be afraid of something as insignificant as a kiss, even if it made his heart pump uncontrollably under Harry hand, and made all his thoughts run together, and made his mouth dry and his hands itch. 

Harry leaned even close, his lips just brushing against his own, "then prove it, Tom," he said, "show me you're not scared."

**Author's Note:**

> This touched on, but didn't really develop, some nice stuff, so I'll probably write something a little longer, and better developed, on it at some point.


End file.
